Dr. George C. Nichopoulos, Elvis Presley’s personal physician in the decade before his death in 1977, who lost his medical license for overprescribing addictive drugs for years to numerous patients, died on Wednesday in Memphis. He was 88.

Memorial Park Funeral Home in Memphis announced his death in a post on its website.

Dr. Nichopoulos, known as Dr. Nick, was the doctor on call at a medical center in Memphis in 1967 when he was summoned to treat Presley at his home, Graceland. The singer was suffering from saddle sores on his thighs and buttocks caused by too much horseback riding.

Doctor and patient struck up a rapport, and for the next few years, whenever Presley flew in from Hollywood, Dr. Nichopoulos treated him for a variety of complaints, most related to insomnia and rheumatic pain.

After Presley returned to Memphis permanently in 1970, Dr. Nichopoulos became his primary physician and something more. “I was one of his closest friends,” he told the investigative reporter Gerald Posner for a 2009 article in The Daily Beast. “At times I was his father, his best friend, his doctor. Whatever role I needed to play at the time, I did.”

Presley was found slumped over in a bathroom in Graceland, dead, on Aug. 16, 1977. He was 42.

The county medical examiner found the cause to be coronary arrhythmia, or irregular heartbeat, resulting from hypertensive heart disease related to high blood pressure, but a toxicology report fueled speculation that drug use had played a role. It showed “significant” levels of codeine, the sedative Ethinamate, quaaludes and an undetermined barbiturate.

Lesser amounts of morphine, Demerol, Placidyl, Valium and Chlorpheniramine, an antihistamine, were also found. In a 1981 interview with American Medical News, Dr. Nichopoulos said he had prescribed only two of the drugs in the report.

In 1980 Dr. Nichopoulos was indicted on 14 counts of overprescribing stimulants, depressants and painkillers for Presley, the singer Jerry Lee Lewis and several other patients. Two counts dealing with Presley accused Dr. Nichopoulos of “unlawfully, willfully and feloniously” prescribing, in the months leading to Presley’s death, a cornucopia of narcotics, painkillers, depressants and appetite suppressants.

Dr. Nichopoulos was acquitted of all charges, but in 1995 the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners permanently suspended his medical license, stating that he had been overprescribing to numerous patients for years.

In one of several appeals to the board, Dr. Nichopoulos admitted overprescribing — in 1977 alone he wrote prescriptions for more than 10,000 doses of opiates, amphetamines, barbiturates, tranquilizers, hormones and laxatives for Presley — but denied being a “Dr. Feelgood” feeding his patient’s addictions.

“I cared too much,” he told the board.

In his 2010 memoir, “The King and Dr. Nick: What Really Happened to Elvis and Me,” written with Rose Clayton Phillips and published in 2010, Dr. Nichopoulos explained that the medications were intended for Presley’s entourage, band and production crew, whom he treated on the road. He maintained that he had tried, in vain, to cure Presley of his addictions, often administering placebos.

“Elvis was a firm believer there was a medicine for everything,” he told American Medical News. “You know how some people will sneeze and think they need a pill, or get a muscle cramp and want relief, or go to the dentist and need a painkiller? Others aren’t bothered. Elvis was convinced he needed drugs.”

George Constantine Nichopoulos was born on Oct. 29, 1927, in Ridgway, Pa., and grew up in Anniston, Ala., where his father, a Greek immigrant, opened a small restaurant, Gus’ Sanitary Café.

He enlisted in the Army out of high school and served in Germany in the Army Medical Corps. After leaving the military he enrolled in the pre-med program at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1951. He pursued graduate work in clinical physiology at the University of Tennessee Medical School and went on to earn a medical degree from Vanderbilt University Medical School in 1959.

Dr. Nichopoulos belonged to a group practice with five other doctors in Memphis devoted to internal medicine when the call came to treat Presley, a professional detour that virtually ruined his life and destroyed his career.

In 1980, before the indictment, the state board of medical examiners, while clearing him of charges of unethical conduct, barred him from practicing medicine for three months and put him on probation for three years, a prelude to the permanent suspension of his license 15 years later.

In his memoir, in an attempt to end speculation that drugs led to Presley’s death, Dr. Nichopoulos offered a long list of the singer’s medical problems, including mild diabetes, glaucoma, migraine headaches, insomnia, adrenal deficiency and allergies causing nose and throat problems. He theorized that Presley’s death was caused by megacolon, a paralysis of the bowel making it difficult or impossible to eliminate solid waste,

“To my knowledge the amount of prescription medications Elvis took had nothing to do with his death,” he told the website Elvis Information Network in 2010. “What he was taking was medically appropriate and did not lead to complications that caused his death.”

Unable to practice medicine, Dr. Nichopoulos worked for the disability claims department at a Federal Express office and briefly worked as a road manager for Jerry Lee Lewis. He organized a “Memories of Elvis” tour to exhibit some of his Presley memorabilia, which included his doctor’s bag. In it was an empty Dilaudid bottle with Presley’s name on it. The tour ended after shows at two Las Vegas Casinos.

He is survived by his wife, Edna; two daughters, Christine Nichopoulos and Elaine Nichopoulos; a son, Dean; four grandchildren; and nine great-grandchildren.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: George Nichopoulos, 88, Dies; Elvis Presley’s Doctor. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe